Poor Show - Horrible Advertisements of the Week: Every Hulu Commercial

See What You Made Me Do?

Once again, the subject of this week's hub isn't the worst offender, but I like to dream of an idealistic world where advertisers have finally learned the best way to win consumers is not to continue their current practice of forcing me to watch their ads so many times it becomes as horribly annoying as having an itchy nose while trapped inside of an iron maiden, during a talent show at a middle school for the mentally subnormal. And yet someone, presumably with a brain resembling week old mashed potatoes, still insists unskippable ad's are the way forward.

Tortured analogies aside, I honestly don't follow the logic of these people. Advertising is the art of convincing people to do something they probably wouldn't otherwise do, and as such such is all about the subtly. But explain how forcing me to pay attention to the same, dull, 30-45 second clip for the 400th time is in anyway subtle. Once more, no matter how clever the advertisement may be, I will have very little good will left after I've been kidnapped before every single YouTube video I try to watch, and my contempt for your company would be enough to make Nyarlathotep himself back slowly out the door.

Alright, On With It Then

So, Hulu, put your head on the block and let's get started. Firstly, the advertisement it self isn't bad; however, once again, they made 2 mistakes that absolutely kill it. Number one, the old, well-beaten horse: a 30 second run time with a sleeping skip button, and number two: the choice of music.

I think I have have covered the first problem sufficiently, so I'll talk about the other, more interesting one: music. The thing to bear in mind here is that music, like comedy, is a finite thing. A joke that was funny once will start to feel like shoving razor wire under your fingernails after you've been forced to hear it for the 23rd time, and the same applies to songs in advertisements. Since it's been established that you people seem to think the best way to earn my interest is to repeatedly throw a brick at my head every time I click on a new video, the least you could do is follow a couple basic commandments:

1. Thou shalt not have thine music louder than the rest of the Advert

2. Thine music should be simple and reserved, no more than a few repeating cords

3. Thou shalt not include words in thine music, unless thou likes the site of pitchforks and angry mobs at the door of thine establishment

There! Was that so hard? Then again, this requires that you first know how to read, which is by no means a given, considering that the only requirement to create advertisements for these companies seems to be, "Were you dropped out of no more than 3 two-story windows as an infant?"

You're Not Getting Off That Easily

One common thing advertisers like to do is to cut their advert in half, reducing the run time to 15 seconds, and thus solving all the problems I have with it, right? Nope, not quite. You see, advertisers only do this to save money, and because they're about as reserved as a Jehovah's Witness with a battering ram, I've already had to sit through the original advertisement about 300 times, so I still hate it just as much. And even disregarding that, after they've chopped the advertisement down, it's almost always painfully obvious where they've cut it, so I'm far too distracted by the edits or my passionate loathing to care what the things about.

In Conclusion...

Okay, I guess I'm done for this week. But someday I'd like to see a world where the collective IQ of advertisers has exceeded that of a dead goldfish floating down a sewer pipe, and sensibly timed advertisements are shown at a half-decent rate, instead of every single video without fail. In the mean time, I suppose I'll just keep typing these up every week, making fun of things not designed to be criticized anyway, like a man yelling at barber for his poor screen-play writing skills. See you next time.

(Yes I'm aware of the irony of these being monetized, you're ever so clever for pointing that out. I'm also aware that I missed last week, and my only excuse for that is school. That, and a work ethic somewhere between a civil-engineer and Caligula)